The inverted schedule week

Here we are at the last post I need to write before I'm officially considered "caught up." It has been quite the endeavor. This will cover the week of Monday April 13 to Sunday April 19th. 

My normal work schedule at Aspen Grove is Monday and Friday mornings, and Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I try to keep Wednesday as my day off. But I managed to completely invert my schedule for the week. 

Monday was the day Veronica got braces put on. They only do that appointment in the morning so instead of going to work I took her to the Orthodontist. She's already had two or three consultations with them so we were pretty solid on the plan. But since it's been a year since her last consultation we still had to redo that part. The office manager, Crystal, helped talk lots of picture and some x-rays. Then we had the quick consult with the orthodontist. And when we were done I made the down payment and then it was time for Veronica to get braces on. 

She was a good sport through the process, but she also was pretty vocal about things that bothered her. I'd given her Ibuprofen before the appointment, but she was still in a little bit of pain. She complained about her teeth hurting for the next several days.

She was also immediately self conscious about the braces so I didn't take a picture of her with them on.

She only has top braces for now. She'll get the bottom braces put on at her next appointment. She and Derrick are both scheduled for the same time. He'll get his off, and she'll get her bottom braces on. 

After Veronica was dropped back off at school I went into work and got things done. 

While I was at work I got a notification in the Curtain Call Committee Group. My friend Sarah was reaching out to see if anyone else on the committee was interested in meeting to talk about what could be done to either bring back the Curtain Calls or create something in their place. I was really happy to see that. When everything fell apart I'd told Brandon that it would take either Sarah or Dusty to save it. And here was Sarah doing just what I'd hoped. 

Lots of people were saying they wanted to be involved, but I wasn't so sure. It had been a rough few days and I felt like I was finally getting back to normal. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be involved again. 

But Sarah reached out to me in particular on messenger. I was touched that she wanted me involved. And so I said that I'd be at the meeting. At this point even though I didn't want to be involved I felt like I HAD to be involved. 

That evening we had a very special family activity. On Sunday at dinner Brandon had told me that he really wanted to see Project Hail Mary in theatres. I was like, "Yes we should make that happen. Let's go tomorrow night."  Charlotte and Lydia also wanted to see the movie so we made it a family activity. 

Derrick was not excited at first. He's like me and likes things scheduled on the calendar. At first he did not understand that we were just going to see a movie. Like how could we do that if it wasn't on the calendar? I assured him that he would like the movie. 

It was really fun to go to the movie theatre on Monday night. There was hardly anyone there and that was nice. The movie was really great. The kids loved it so much. I'm so glad we made this happen. 

When it was over Derrick turned to me and said, "Mom you were right. I really liked that." He also told me, "The end made me think about the end of Lightyear when Buzz says, 'for the first time in a long time I fell like I am home.'" I was really proud of him for making that connection. 

We came home and quoted the movie to each other the whole way home. The kids had loved every single thing that Rocky did. 

On Tuesday I would normally have gone into work in the afternoon, but because I'd had a shorter day on Monday I made sure to go to work as soon as I dropped Derrick off. 

In the afternoon after school I took Veronica to theatre. Then I took the three older kids out to Tubbs Berry Farm for their summer weed crew job interviews. They were all hired on the spot. I'm really excited for Derrick to have this job this summer. And it will continue to be a good fit for Charlotte and Lydia. They are also old enough to work a few other places around town, but those places require weekend shifts. And the girls aren't interested in that. So we are sticking with this one that is just Wednesday mornings. 

I picked Veronica up from theatre. She'd had a great time as usual. 

On Wednesday I had my second half of scripture study group for the month. It was the second part of Micah. Which I still don't love. But the lesson went okay. 

After that I had to go into work for our monthly team meeting. I wasn't presenting at this one. But we had a potluck. That was fun. The meeting was half team meeting for everyone and then half consultation time for the therapists. I was excused for that second half. I was like, "good, I don't want to know all this mumbo jumbo." Everyone laughed. 

I was going to go back to my office and work, but I had a call from Derrick's school. Earlier his teacher had sent me a picture of him asleep in the calm down room. He'd slept for like 2 hours. They'd woken him up for lunch, but he was shivering a lot. It seemed like he was getting sick. So I came and picked him up. 

I'd checked out the old movie What's Up Doc because I remembered it had a lot of really zany scenes and I figured Derrick would like those. So we snuggled up on the couch and I helped Derrick warm up while we watched it. That was fun.

By the end of the movie he was back to being warm enough and really didn't seem sick the rest of the day. So he went back to school on Thursday with no problems.  

When Charlotte got home she showed us the hurricane proof house she'd made for her science class. 

On Thursday I had my second to last zoom board meeting for Idaho Parents Unlimited. The meeting was right in the middle of the day from 11:00 to 1:00. So it was easiest to just plan to work from home all day rather than try to make that work. 

It was also a really random snow day. The weather had been great, and then temps dropped from the 70's to the 30's. 

I'd been worried about the night temperatures which were supposed to be around 27 degrees. I'd even covered one of my cherry trees with sheets to protect the fruit. But everything seems to have made it home okay. 

Here's what the garden looked like. 

The tulips were covered, but they were fine when everything melted. 

Here's more of the back yard.

And more of the front yard. 

It was really nice to spend the whole day working from home. And the zoom meeting went well. (Though I might have fallen asleep at some point.)

That evening I took Veronica to theatre and returned a book to the library. I'd finished it a few days earlier, but I didn't take a picture until right before I returned it. This was The Third Pole and yes, it's another Everest book. This one was all about an expedition in 2019 to try to find the body of George Mallory's climbing partner Sandy Irvine. I really liked this book. There were a few things that made it really interesting - even though I've read similar books. 

1. This expedition took place in 2019.  It was cool to see how much modern technology has improved climbing Everest. (Though bad weather is still a factor they can't control)

2. The expedition was on the north side. Into Thin Air had been about the south side. Dark Summit was also about the north side so this wasn't my first north side book, but it did a better job of explaining the topography. 

3. The author expertly weaved the story of his expedition in 2019 with the story of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine in 1924. I learned a lot about both expeditions. 

4. There was a lot of explanations about little details about what exactly causes HAPE or about different oxygen sets or why Sherpas do so well at high altitude. It was all really informative.

I still think Into Thin Air is the best narrative about Everest. But this one is the best if you want to know more about Everest.  

I went grocery shopping on Thursday night again because there would be no time on Friday.  

That's because on Friday I was going on a field trip with Charlotte and Lydia! The whole 9th grade class was going to CSI to learn about their CTE courses. CTE stands for. . . . . Career and Technical Education. So basically all the trades, and the business department for some reason. 

They needed three parent volunteers and I volunteered. Charlotte and Lydia were both in my group. Along with 21 other students. But fortunately 8 of them didn't show up. So I was only in charge of 15. 

Brandon went into work late so he could take care of dropping off Veronica and Derrick at the middle schools. 

I met up with the parents and teachers going on the field trip at 7:45 in the big gym at the high school. The lady in charge had a list of all my students as well as sticker name tags for each of them. Everything was in a manilla folder with my name on it. I held that up and the kids came and found me. 

At 8:15 we went to our buses. We were on bus 6 with another group. We arrived at CSI and went into the Fine Arts Building Auditorium. A college recruiter type guy gave a speech about how much CSI had to offer. 

Then we were divided by group for our tour. We were the agriculture group. We went to a building and went through three thirty minute rotations. I thought they were SUPER boring. But the kids seemed to be okay with them for the most part. Charlotte said she learned a lot. And really when I looked at it from a 9th grade perspective it was probably really informative. But I've attended 4 different colleges so there really wasn't much for me to learn about the process of getting into college. I did learn two things though. 

1. Sour Dough creates lactic acid. (The food science teacher said this one in passing and I was like, wait what?)

2. The vet tech program is really hard to get into. I'd been talking to Veronica about that program. So that was good to know. 

At 11:45 we got back on the buses and went back to school. All morning long I'd been counting to 15 over and over as my group moved around. When we got back on the bus and I counted 15 one final time I was like, "Good job group! I didn't lose any of you!"

Then we went back to the school and that was it. I made sure my kids were back in the school, said goodbye to Charlotte and Lydia. And then drove to work. 

Work was great. After feeling out of my element all day it was nice to be back doing what I knew how to do. 

When I got home from work I went outside and did some yard work. I trimmed a bunch of dead branches out of the big tree. I still had a lot of other branches that needed to be burned too. So I decided to plan a real improptu fire pit night for Saturday at 6:00. I sent out a message to the ward facebook group for moms. 

Almost as soon as I planned that I got a message from Jared at the Orpheum. He and Diane wanted to meet with Heather, Sarah, and me to explain some of the things that had happened in the aftermath of the Curtain Call Awards - specifically why they had been shut down. I could not for the life of me figure out why I was involved in this meeting. I'm pretty small potatoes in the theatre community so I didn't think Jared or Diane needed to explain anything to me. I'd never actually been the committee chair for the Curtain Calls. But he wanted me there for some reason. He originally wanted to meet on Saturday night at 6:00. But I had plans for that time and really most of the day. Sarah couldn't make it either. We set up the meeting time for 8:00 AM on Sunday because that's the time we all could make it. 

On Friday night Derrick, Brandon, and I watched the old Poseidon Adventure. Derrick likes disaster movies so I'd ordered this one to watch. He liked it. He calls it the upside-down boat. 

Saturday was a day we had an adventure planned with Jori's family. We drove out to Black Magic Canyon north of Shoshone.  From the parking area it doesn't look like there is anything to see. 

But if you go down a small slope you see a canyon with volcanic rock on either side. 

We came here 6 years ago. This was our first time back. (We'd kind of lost the guidebook with the directions for a few years.)

Jori and her family went nuts for all the cool rocks. I joked, "How do you make a 2 tenths of a mile hike take 2 hours? Fill it with cool rocks."

The canyon was full of interesting features. 

When the water flows through the canyon it changes the shape of everything. So this was both familiar and foreign at the same time. 

Here I am. 

I think my favorite features were the big holes filled with things. 

I liked the dry ones that had rocks in them. 

This one was really deep and had sand in the bottom. 

Look at this lambs ear growing in a crack. 

Lydia found a cave. 

She, Derrick, and I had waded through all these weeds to get there. 

Here she is in the cave. 

I liked how the rocks had a sheen on them. 

We left that area and came home and took little breaks. Then at 6:00 we had our fire. Jori's family was there and so was our friend Brad with three of his four kids. One of his kids was in the hospital and his wife was with her. I was glad that I'd planned the fire because it seemed to be a good distraction from a really stressful situation. We had a great time. And I burned through my whole pile of sticks and other yard stuff. The kids had fun playing. Charlotte let some of them see the chicks in the garage and pet the big chickens. 

On Sunday I was up early to be at the Orpheum at 8:00. Jared and his wife Emily were there. So was Sarah and Heather. Diane had to call in because her husband has some health issues. 

Jared and Diane told us all the full story of what had happened. I'd known about a third of it going in. By the end I knew probably 90% of the story. And it was A LOT. 

I also learned why I was there. Jared wanted me to know for two reasons. 1. He knew how much I'd put into the Curtain Call Awards. When decisions had to be made he was really sorry that I wouldn't know the full reasons. He hadn't planned to tell anyone, but when he realized he needed to have some people know he wanted me to be one of those people. The second reason is that he just really admires my family. He LOVES Brandon. And so that meant he trusted me. I was really touched by that. 

The meeting lasted two hours and it was full of a lot of heavy things. But we left on good terms. And with some hope. Jared wasn't willing to support an award show like the the Curtain Calls again. But he was interested in supporting some sort of community theatre celebration type show. So that was promising. Sarah and I would take that information to the new committee meeting that afternoon. 

Back at home I needed to prep for Sunday school that afternoon. My friend Jeff teaches Sunday school and he had asked me to do a 10 minute presentation to get the class caught up on where we were in the Old Testament Timeline. Thanks to Stake Conference, Palm Sunday, and General Conference we hadn't had Sunday school since MARCH 1ST! At that point Isaac was still a kid. Now we were in Exodus with Moses. 

So I prepared a quick genealogy lesson tracking Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Then I showed how Moses connected to Jacob's son Levi. I also threw in quick geography lesson showing how Jacob had traveled east to marry Leah and Rachel and then come back to Canaan before moving to Egypt. 

And I threw in the theology of how younger brothers often superseded older brothers. I pointed out that this was representative of a small kingdom like Israel being great among much bigger nations.  

It was a lot to cover in 10 minutes, but I hoped some of it stuck. 

We went to church and sacrament meeting was good. Our friend Brad and his kids sat with us. The youngest loudly announced, "I want to sit with the one with braces!" Meaning Veronica. 

When it was Sunday school time Brandon got the white board and drew a map of Canaana and Egypt on it. He also was my scribe and wrote down names as I said them. That was really helpful. 

I had my phone set to chime when I hit 10 minutes, because I didn't want to go over my time. Also the Committee meeting started at 3:00 and I didn't want to be super late. I went through my whole presentation in 8.5 minutes. I probably could have talked slower, but I was so keyed up from the adrenaline of trying to get through the presentation and make it to the other meeting. 

Jeff's wife Lindsey had actually gone into labor that morning. So a member of the bishobric was subbing. I think he kind of wished that I could stay and teach the rest of the lesson. But I was like, "peace out, I need to be in filer."

I left and made it to Filer by like 3:08. The meeting hadn't even really started when I got there. 

And I'm so glad Sarah made sure I was there. Because that meeting was cathartic. We mostly talked about what we wanted to do to replace the curtain call awards. There were 8 other people there and it was so nice to be around people that wanted an event to continue. We'd all kind of been suffering alone and in silence for the past week and a half.

We also had some good laughs. Sarah kept saying that the problem with the event was we held it on a full moon. So I joked that should be part of the marketing for next time. It would say something like, "The Shemertin Smalls: Totally not on a full moon this time." 

The meeting was two hours and I left feeling so much hope. We don't have an official plan or a name, but we have another meeting planned to get that part figured out. 

And then I came home and discovered that I'd broken out in hives from all the stress of that day in particular and the last three weeks in general. So that was fun. 

But despite my body freaking out - I was actually feeling pretty good. The some sort of community theatre celebration event was in the works again. I'd been trusted with information. (I hate the information, but I appreciated the trust.) And I had a normal week coming up for once. So yeah hives were just a minor annoyance. 

And that gets us caught up. 

Thanks for reading. 

Second week after vacation (and Derrick's birthday somehow)

I'm still working to get caught up on this blog. I'm getting very, very close. This blog post will cover the second week after our vacation. It's from Monday April 6 to Sunday April 12. Derrick's birthday was during this time. 

But first, we need to talk about my mental state after the vacation. It was . . . not good. I thought I'd come back from vacation with lots of energy and ready to tackle everything. But instead I came back from vacation and was like, "Do I even like anything I do?"  

The vacation had been so good. It was nice to relax and just enjoy fun things as a family. And without knowing it, my internal priorities got a little shifted. I came back not as interested in the hustle I had been doing. 

Even Aspen Grove, which has been the best job that I've loved for over 7 years, was suddenly feeling like a burden. 

At first I thought I was just tired. There hadn't been much time between coming home from the vacation and jumping back into life. And yes I was tired. But even after I got some rest and got back on top of things at work I was still looking at everything and being like, "Do I really want to do this?"

And so I started making some hard decisions. 

Aspen Grove was staying. And after a little bit more sleep I did remember that I loved that job. But everything else was on the chopping block. 

I decided to step down from the Idaho Parents Unlimited Board of Directors as of this fall. That meant I would have two more zoom board meetings, but I would not attend the in person meeting. This was a hard decision, but also a needed one. That in person meeting is a good meeting, but it wreaks havoc on my schedule. It also comes about 2 weeks before I serve as an election Judge and taking time off for both those things is always hard on my work schedule. But in some ways this was an easy decision because I've found myself caring about that board less and less. I'd rather focus my energy on something more local. 

I also made some hard decisions about my billing business. The decisions were kicked off by Ivan telling me he was going to pivot more to his online coaching. By the end of May he only planned to have 6 insurance clients. So my role there would be greatly reduced. At first I was like, "Oh no, I need to find some more billing clients."  But the more I thought about it the more relieved I was. I realized that Chattertown will also be ramping down their need for me about that same time. (Andrea is doing so well!) And that just left Gaining Perspective which also really didn't need me that much any more. So I decided to not worry about getting my billing business up and running right now. I'd let everyone naturally ramp down during the spring and not worry about it during the summer. The only extra billing client I'd keep though the summer would be Jump Company. I could have a relaxing summer with the kids. And that felt important because this is the last summer before Charlotte and Lydia would have big summer jobs.  And then maybe in the Fall I'd start finding some more clients. Maybe.

I felt a lot of peace after decided to step away from some of these extra things. But it took a lot of soul searching to get to that peace. 

The ironic thing is that there was one thing I really wanted to do, but then it caused me so much more stress. I'd been wanted to take over as committee chair for the Curtain Calls for the next year. The Curtain Call Awards were on Thursday and on Saturday I started reaching out to a few people to find out if they were okay with me taking over. And that's how I started to find out about the terrible fallout from the reactions of a few people at the Curtain Call Awards. 

It made me feel awful to know that terrible things had been said. And the "victims" in the situation weren't acting very adult either. I honestly started to feel like a couldn't trust anyone. I vacillated between wanting to give up on the whole thing and wondering if I really should want to be in charge. But I also wondered if I was the perfect person to be in charge at this time because I was neutral enough to not have built in biases. But it was hard because I'm so new to the theatre community I don't quite know the history. Or to put it another way I don't know where the land mines were buried. 

I was honestly relieved when I found out on Wednesday that Diane Stevens had made the decision to shut down the Curtain Calls. By that point I knew only a teeny bit of the story and that had me stressed out enough. 

But it was also heart wrenching to have them shut down so quickly. Most of the committee was completely blindsided. Sarah later told me she felt like she'd been broken up with and then ghosted. I told her that I felt like I was a child in a divorce. I felt like everything was my fault - even though it wasn't my fault. The other adults were the ones reacting terribly. But I still felt so guilty. What if I had been able to put the set list in a different order? What if my statement at the beginning of the show had better described how the committee decided to handle to voting rules for the year? What if? What if? What if?

So anyway, all this is to say that I'm going to take you through the day to day recap for the week. And it's going to look pretty normal. But underneath that normal was a whole lot of emotional turmoil. I look back on that week as one of the hardest weeks I've had in a while. 

So yeah, let's get recapping!

On Monday April 6 I think I spent most of the day at work at Aspen Grove getting on top of a lot of different things. I always like when I can focus like that. 

That afternoon, Derrick had his orthodontist appointment. They confirmed that he would get his braces off at his next appointment. I'd long promised Veronica that she would get her braces on when Derrick was done. (I did not want to deal with coordinating appointments for two kids who went to two different schools!) So as soon as we knew that Derrick was almost done I got Veronica scheduled to have her braces put on. She would get them on the following Monday. 

Speaking of Veronica, she has spent hours and hours making a 40 minute movie. She learned a lot about editing in the process. I don't know if the movie will ever be done, but it's been a good learning experience. Her she is at the computer in Derrick's room. 

On Tuesday morning I took Veronica to the dentist to get some cavities filled. She did not like the process very much. But she put up with it. 

That evening I spent a lot of time weeding my vegetable garden beds. The weather was perfect. Charlotte and Lydia got the picnic blankets out of the car and laid in the grass in the backyard. They listened to music and worked on their stories. I think they did this every night that week. 

Brandon bought cake mix and frosting and made Derrick's cake that evening. Derrick said he wanted the cake to have a raptor coming out of some leaves. I'd already bought a raptor figurine to go on the cake. I also bought palm trees at Hobby Lobby. Brandon took care of everything else. He stayed up until Midnight icing it. That sounds terrible, but he said he had so much fun. He looked up how to make leaf details on youtube and then had fun doing them on the cake. 

Wednesday April 8th was Derrick's 14th birthday. Here's the cake where Brandon put it on the fridge when he was done. He was already at work by the time the rest of us woke up. It was so cool to see that cake in the morning. 

The first part of the day was pretty typical. I got all the kids to school and then I went out to Filer to do the bookkeeping for Jump Company. Chris Ayers and I talked a bit about the Curtain Calls, but by this point I was thinking everything would die down. I thought everyone just needed to get over their pettiness. I had no idea of the more ridiculous things going on behind the scenes.  It would come as a complete shock that afternoon when I found out they were cancelled. Chris and I had had no idea. 

I had to leave at 11:00 to pick up Veronica for her therapy appointment. While she was in therapy I went across the street to the county DMV and got a parks pass sticker for my van. I also asked some questions about the title. (Yep, that saga is still on going.)

Then I took Veronica back to school for the day. I went home and worked on writing about going to Universal Studios. It was while I was working on that post I found out the Curtain Calls were ended. I also found out a little bit more of what had been going on the past few days. And that was really hard to hear. So I spent the rest of the day being sad about that while being happy for Derrick's birthday.

After school some of the boys in the teachers quarom came over to give Derrick a balloon and some candy. That was really sweet of them. (And even more sweet of Cayson's mom Kori who coordinated the whole thing.)

We went out to eat at Burger King because they have a good deal on Wednesdays. It was like $6 for Whopper value meals. We paid less than $40 for all of us to eat. That was a steal compared to the $90 we'd paid in California.

Then we went back home and Derrick opened his presents. Derrick and I had bought most of these at Hobby Lobby after his dentist appointment on Monday. (In case you can't tell I didn't have mental space for his birthday until after the Curtain Calls and Easter were over.)

Here's a drone that he'd picked out at Hobby Lobby.

Then we went into the kitchen to have cake. But first I had to take a billion pictures. 

From every angle. Look at all the details Brandon was able to do with different piping tips. 

This cake was so cool.

He even made it so there was a game trail for the raptor to run on. 

He also made an exposed cliff face. 

Here's Brandon and Derrick with the cake. 

And here it is with the candle lit. 

Derrick loved it. 

And LOOK at those layers. Brandon really did an incredible job on this cake. 

Here's Derrick flying his drone around. 

He had a great birthday and he was so excited to turn 14. 

Thursday was the day I finally got out of some of my sadness over the curtain calls. I'd had a hard time sleeping on Wednesday night so I spent a lot of time thinking. I realized that the last time I felt this distraught over the end of something it was back in 2019 with the Radio Ronin podcast. Kenny had left/been kicked off the podcast in a messy way. Back then, I'd had this same feeling of feeling like I was a child in a divorce and my parents were fighting. That had happened pretty soon after I'd moved to Twin Falls and I remember thinking, "If I'm this upset about someone leaving a podcast, maybe I need to get some real friends." But now it was my real friends who were fighting. 

So I wanted to retreat back to my podcast friends. I remembered that I hadn't had the chance to listen to the Baconsale episode for that week. (Which just shows how weird of a week it was since I usually listen to that when it comes out on Mondays.) So after I dropped Derrick off at school I pulled up the episode and pushed play. And within 5 minutes I was smiling and laughing at the show. They were talking about the Music of 1986. The previous episode had been all about cookies and they referenced that and said cookies in such an upbeat way. It was honestly the pick me up I needed.

I was like, "Oh right, that's what happiness feels like."

I was able to get a lot of things done on Thursday without the cloud that had been seeming to follow me all week. 

(But apparently I didn't feel like taking any pictures.)

It was Brandon's pay day so that night I did a big grocery shopping trip. We hadn't had a big stock up grocery shopping trip since our vacation so we needed A LOT. It was good to get so much food. But I was exhausted by the end.

But that big shopping trip on Thursday was worth it for how much it freed up my Friday. I went to work in the morning like normal, but I didn't have to go grocery shopping afterward like I had been doing. Instead I went home. I'd had pork chops cooking in the crock pot all day so we could have pulled pork sandwiches that evening instead of taking time to make pizza. 

I went outside and pulled weeds for a long time. When everyone came home from school we had the pulled pork sandwiches and coleslaw for dinner. And then I went right back out to the garden. It was such a good afternoon/evening.  Here's the whole back area I weeded. 

Charlotte and Lydia wanted me to take a picture of the chicks. We'd had them a week and they were getting so big. 

Charlotte hadn't got eggs out of the coop in 2 days so she had quite the haul when she did get the eggs out. There's 10 there. 

At one point a big rain storm moved in for about 10 minutes. We stood on the patio and watched it. It was really cool. 

On Saturday Derrick was having a birthday party. So we cleaned the house really well. 

My tulips were looking amazing. My friend Hanah told me they looked like Temple Square. 

I love how they look.

They really make me so happy to look at them.

I love this cluster of yellow ones. 

People literally slow down as they drive past my house. 

It's just the best!

I thought I'd do more yard work. But I was tired. I tried drinking a celcius mix in, but I just got sleepy after I took it. I was like, "I think I'm tapped out." So I took a nap on the patio. Here's what the view from the patio couch is one way. 

And the other way. It's a great place to hang out and to sleep.

That evening we had three boys over. Finn J and Tyler O from the ward. And Max from Derrick's school. Max can get overwhelmed by big groups so at first we didn't invite him because I was worried the whole teachers quorum would show up. But when I found out that most of the boys couldn't make it we invited Max. He stayed for about 90 minutes and then wanted to go home, but that's a really big deal for Max. He's really come along way this year. The first time he came to my house he stayed like 20 minutes. 

The boys watched Jurassic World Rebirth. I'd really hoped that Finn N could have made it because he gives the BEST running commentary during movies and I really wanted to hear his reactions to that movie. But he didn't make it. So I just spent most of the time upstairs writing. 

And now we've made it to Sunday. Lydia had put the palm tress from Derrick's cake on the stair rail. She said, "We are all missing California. This will help." She was right. 

This was our first week back to church in five weeks. We'd last been to church on March 1st. We'd missed church on the 8th because we went to see Lindsey and Emily in Utah. The 15th had been stake conference and we just watched it on zoom. We were on vacation the 22nd and 29th. And April 5th had been General Conference. 

It felt weird to be back at church. After sacrament meeting Brandon asked me if it was Sunday school or Elders Quorum. I told him it was Elders Quorum. I thought about saying, "So that means you go to Young Mens." But I was like, "Nah, he'll remember he was supposed to go there."

But Brandon was only recently called into the Young Mens and his brain hasn't quite updated to remember that. He was running off of a very old program or something because he happily went to Elders Quorum and never gave a thought to Young Mens. 

After church I asked Derrick, "How was Young Mens?"  And he told me, "It was fun. We didn't have a teacher. So we just sat and talked."  And I was thinking, "Where on earth was your dad?"

I'm also super curious where all the other men that should have been there got off to. Sometimes I wonder who thought it was a good idea to put the Bishopric in charge of the Young Men. Those boys are NOT getting the attention they should be getting. 

Anyway, in other church news we had our Young Women Presidency and our Sunday School Presidency reorganized. Our Sunday School Presidency is now all women. The Young Women's president was released and one of her counselors is now the president. 

The Young Women were having a heartfelt meeting during their class time. It went a little long. Right at 3:30 Derrick opened the door and said, "It's 3:30. It's time to go!"  Veronica died a thousand deaths over that, but everyone else thought it was really funny.  

After church Brandon made ham and baked twice potatoes. These were what we were supposed to have on Easter, but he'd been too tired. So we had them now. It was a good meal. 

Then the kids started playing with the RC cars that Derrick got for his birthday. One was a Jurassic Park RC car and the other was a Deloposaurus. 

Then they found a bunch of toys from down stairs.

And this led to Veronica recreating the whole Jurassic World Ride downstairs. It was pretty cool, but somehow I didn't get a picture. 

I spent the rest of the night working on my Micah lesson plan. 

And that was the end of that week. 

Thanks for reading.